"It continues to be pitching," he said. "I think it's important for us to solidify our rotation. We won with pitching this year. We were a team built on offense, but we tweaked it enough to get to the point where pitching became the thing that carried us. If you were to ask . . . if pitching would be the thing that would carry us, probably we wouldn't have been that sure. We probably would have to bang them to win. But we know that it's the same deal - you've got to have pitching to win this thing."

Pat Burrell? I don't expect him back, but Amaro hasn't ruled it out yet.

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Gillick is staying on as an advisor to Amaro. That's a good thing.

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Some people have wondered why Davey Lopes wasn't at the parade. I'm told he is fine, but returned home for personal reasons.

Thanks to everybody who has visited this blog daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or whenever. The Phillies Zone was the most read sports blog at philly.com in October and the most read sports blog at philly.com this year. Of course, we got a head start on the Eagles, but I just want to say thanks to everybody who checks us out every day.

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Because nobody can get enough highlights from the World Series. Here's Charlie Manuel's postgame interview on the field. At the 1:20 mark you can hear Manuel utter an "I hear ya!" at the sight of the Inquirer. That's funny to me only because that's something Manuel says all the time. It goes something like this:

"Charlie, looks like it's going to rain.""I hear ya."

"Charlie, what is up with your bullpen?" (A question that would have been asked before 2008.)"I hear ya."